


(pretty sure this isn't) how our story ends

by reliquiaen



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Gen, low key weiss/ilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 21:24:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19237378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reliquiaen/pseuds/reliquiaen
Summary: “Get dressed, farmgirl. You’ll need all the help you can get.”“Insults are unbecoming of you.”Yang thinks she’s lucky all Weiss does is glare at her and stomp out.today on aus with reli, welcome to a new fandom i guess? bc i couldn't have them all being fairy tale references without an obligatory fairy tale inspired au could i? absolutely not. loosely snow white.





	(pretty sure this isn't) how our story ends

_White as freshest snow,_

_Red as blood, black as ebon,_

_Heart of pure spun gold,_

_The fairest holds the beacon._

_~  
_

 

_Magic mirror on the wall, who in this land is the fairest of all?_

 

See, the thing about living on the edge of the kingdom is that nothing ever happens. Which is probably just how her father likes it, really. Farming is a hard lifestyle, it’s isolating and leaves them with little time for making friends or doing anything really. It also means that the troubles of the kingdom tend not to bother them at all.

Just how her father likes it.

(She and her sister, however, well… they _live_ for news of the outside.)

It’s coincidence that sees her working in the front paddock on this particular day. Her sister is meant to be the one watching over the flock as they graze in the outer fields but nobody ever accused Ruby of having much concentration.

Yang tips her wide brimmed hat back over her head, tucks her crook under one arm and uses the other to swat flies from her face as she squints over the lopsided railing at the plume of dust rising along the road. (A generous term; roads are paved and the path leading from the nearest village to their humble farmhouse is little more than a dirt track.) It doesn’t take long before columns of soldiers in shining breastplates come trotting their horses past the fence, lances all held at the exact same angle, bell-shaped helmets pressed low (and probably sweltering) over their faces, features concealed behind their grills.

Behind them rides a contingent of what she presumes to be scouts or messengers or something. She hollers out at them and one draws rein by the fence.

“What news?”

This one – not wearing a helmet, so she can see from his dirt streaked face that he’s little more than a boy – scrubs a hand through his tousled blonde hair and says, “A coup! In Vale!”

She blinks. “A coup? Why?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t know, ma’am. We’ve been called from all the outposts to support the king. Could be the start of a civil war for all I know.” And with that, he heels his horse forward and gallops down the path until he catches up to the rest.

Fighting? In the capital? About what?

Sure, the king spends more time worrying about throwing parties and wearing the fanciest clothes (so she’s heard, anyway) than thinking about best running a country, but really? Bloodshed?

When she tells her father and sister that evening, Taiyang just about has to physically restrain Ruby from snatching up the nearest pitchfork and marching off to join them.

“Not much we can do about it, honey,” he says, pressing her back into her chair. “It’ll blow past us, same as everything else.”

Ruby does not seem too happy about that.

Yang spends two hours that evening punching hay bales until her knuckles are rubbed raw and her entire body protests with exhaustion. It doesn’t help.

 

\--

 

He’s right, of course. Just like he always is.

The coup becomes a civil war and soldiers are conscripted from their village. Taiyang nearly is too, but he has a longstanding knee injury that would make him useless in a fight (much to their relief).

King Jacques is overthrown, they learn eventually, after a protracted conflict in Vale. Many people die, many more are injured. The city itself is apparently reduced to rubble in places.

They see none of it.

The family who initiated the uprising – with some weird plant name, Yang thinks, maybe? Doesn’t really matter to her who’s ruling the country – suffers their own losses. It takes a while, but eventually they do hear that the man who was going to replace Jacques as king passes away of injuries sustained during the fighting.

Some other woman takes the throne. (Maybe a relative? Maybe not. Again, Yang doesn’t pay the _who_ of it all much mind, only the _what_.)

It all passes them by. They hear bits and pieces through travellers, refugees, soldiers and – at the conclusion – widows looking for new lives.

People talk about the new queen, of course they do. It’s only natural for gossip to spring up in the wake of such tragedy. Folks want to distract themselves from the horrors they’ve seen and lived through and suffered.

It’s easier.

Just as it’s easier to blame the new queen for everything that goes wrong.

She’s too young, inexperienced, naïve. She’s emotionless, demanding, distant. She’s not interested in playing politics or delegating or negotiating. She’s a hard, cold woman, according to everyone Yang speaks to.

“I heard,” says Coral, a housewife visiting with her husband who helps Taiyang with shearing every spring, “that the new queen had someone thrown in jail just for talking about someone affiliated with the old king’s associates.” She leans on folded arms across the fence. “Apparently there’s a resistance somewhere trying to take back the kingdom in the Schnee name.”

Ruby just about shears an ear off the sheep she looks around at Coral so fast. “Really? A resistance? Do you think we could join them?”

“Mind the shears, sis,” Yang says, laughing. “If you maim the sheep, dad won’t let you out of his sight for the rest of your life.” Despite her own interest in this mention of a resistance group, she feels the need to add, “Never mind let you join a resistance.” Perhaps to caution Ruby, perhaps for herself.

Her shoulders hunch up under her chin and she returns her focus to the task at hand.

Yang at least only has to worry about keeping the sheep from bolting, so she tightens her grip before looking up at Coral. “Do you know where they are?”

Coral shrugs. “Not me. Heather’s son got it into his head to go find them, though, so he’s run off. Didn’t know you kids were such supporters of old Jacques.”

Ruby’s brow has furrowed but she doesn’t look up when she says, “It’s not Jacques we care about, it’s the _adventure_. Think about it! We could be the heroes of the next story to go into the history books!”

Coral clucks her tongue, shakes her head, pushes off the fence. “You kids. There’s a lot of trouble comes from wanting adventure, you know. Lots of going hungry and sleeping under shrubs in the middle of storms. It’s not all romance and sword fights.”

“Nobody said anything about romance,” Ruby grumbles. “Or sword fights. Just wanna see the world.”

“You can do that without joining an underground military operation,” Coral laughs before wandering off.

The shears click together and Yang lets go of the sheep to help Ruby haul the wool up onto the rack. Their father can shear a sheep on his own, even with his bum leg, but it’s a two-man job for them. Taiyang says it’s because they’re not strong enough on their own. Yang knows it’s because he doesn’t _quite_ trust either of them not to mess it up too badly. At least if they’re working together it turns into a competition to see who can do it better and that means less likelihood of something going horribly awry. (Not that this hasn’t happened in the past, but still.)

Ruby sighs heavily. “I want to go and see Vale,” she whines. “Maybe meet some new people, help rebuild, see the new queen!”

Yang huffs and flops down onto the hay bale beside her. “I’m sure Coral is right, you know. About it being not as much fun as it sounds.” She doesn’t really know why she’s bothering to argue with Ruby, she’s right; it does sound much more exciting than all this.

“Maybe. But we won’t know unless we see for ourselves.”

One eyebrow lifts along with the corners of her mouth, teasing. “You want to run away from home? Leave dad with all this work?”

Ruby elbows her in the ribs. “Don’t tell me you’d rather stick around here for the planting and the mucking out stables and the _shearing_. C’mon, Yang,” she sing-songs. “Come with me. It’ll be more fun together!”

And that’s the moment Yang sees it in her head, all spread out in front of her like some glorious child’s book in colourful paints; right from the ‘it all began with’ to the ‘happily ever after’. A fairy tale like the ones Summer used to read them.

The thought of her step-mother sets something undefinable thrumming in her chest, the way it always does. So she smiles, wide and slow and confident.

“Alright. How are we doing this?”

Ruby squeals.

 

\--

 

They obviously don’t tell Taiyang. He’d stop them. But leaving isn’t as easy as Ruby had been expecting. Duh.

In the end, it’s Yang’s plan (Yang who never plans anything) that pulls it all together. It goes like this:

Step one, Yang insists that she and Ruby can take their animals into town for slaughter and he should stay at the farm. His leg acted up a lot that winter and it’s for the best that he not strain himself.

Step two, loading the animals into the back of their wagon, a two-horse drawn thing that’s falling apart at the seams.

Step three, they drop the animals off at the market as always, but then they stop at the carpenter before leaving. He agrees to fix their wagon before the slaughter is done at the end of the week and it’ll be ready for them to take any left-over animals home with them.

Step four, they totally steal their dad’s horses and ride off north towards Vale, skirting around their farm so there’s _no chance_ Taiyang will catch them.

The benefit of this plan is that they have plenty of provisions with them. It’s a four day ride (give or take) to Vale and once there they can hopefully get lost in the city.

 

\--

 

They never do make it to Vale.

 

\--

\--

 

Ruby holds one of the half-rotted wood planks in the air at about shoulder height; she lifts the other up higher and squints at them both as if that will make their weather-worn letters easier to read. She tilts them one way, then the other, then tips her head to the side before leaning in close until her nose is just about pressed to the wood.

“I can’t read this!” she finally - and inevitably - concludes. “But I’m sure it’s the right track we want.”

She bounces back onto her horse and tugs on the reins before Yang can open her mouth. “Hold on, Ruby. Why would we go right?”

Ruby blinks at her. “To… get to Vale?”

“Why would it be that way?”

“Because left will take us to the coast?”

“Vale is on the coast.”

“Yeah, but not here. Further north.” To emphasise this she stabs a finger at the very obvious way the leftmost trail curves out towards the ocean not far from them. “We have to go up first.”

With that, she clucks her tongue and urges the horse onwards. She’s the unstoppable force here, railing against her sister’s immovable object. Yang is left with no choice but to follow along behind her absolute conviction or leave her all by herself in the post-war wilderness. What a decision.

“Do you think we’ll be able to find work?” Ruby asks her when she catches up. “Oh! We could have secret identities.” She splays her hand out in front of her as she leans dramatically over to Yang. “Bakers by day, vigilantes by night!” She clenches her fingers into a fist to emphasise that.

“I think we’ll probably be best off finding work with any rebuilding that’s going on,” Yang reasons. “I’m sure it’s a big effort and they’ll appreciate the help.”

“Right, right. And vigilantes by night.”

“Only if we can find these people, Ruby. We don’t even know where to look.”

Ruby slouches at that, pouting. “Well… we’ll just have to do a lot of looking then.”

They lapse back into silence, watching fields and pasture roll past them on the left and softly rolling grasslands sweep off on their right. Mostly, the road takes them north the first day. Farmhouses can be spotted by the clouds of smoke puffing from their chimneys. Occasionally they catch sight of a farmhand or shepherd, but never close enough to speak to. (Never close enough to ask for directions.)

When they wake the second day (after sleeping under a hedge, notably), Ruby still manages not to look in the least bit disheartened. She _also_ manages to remain convinced they’re going the right way, even when chimney smoke stops appearing and trees begin to crowd the roadside.

The third day they might as well just say they’re riding through forest. Which, as it turns out, is just as well, since the heavens open up a deluge that afternoon and it’s only thanks to the thick canopy that they don’t end up saturated.

“I didn’t know there was so much woodland around Vale,” Ruby says, _still_ sounding quite chipper. She’s staring out at the rain that manages to tumble through the leaves and puddle on the mulchy forest floor, probably bird-watching she’d claim, if asked. Her expression is vacant, a soft pleased smile curving at the edges of her face. “It’s so pretty.”

“There shouldn’t be,” Yang grumbles, shuffling closer to the meagre fire they’ve managed to keep alive. And about her hunched, sullen posture there is nothing softly pleased or pretty. She angles her entire body towards the flames in an attempt to feel the least bit warm. “Pretty sure we’re lost.”

Ruby waves a hand at her, dismissive. “Of course we’re not. How could we get lost following a road?” Her eyes dart, just once, briefly, to what she’s referring to. A _road_ it is not, barely a game track, but that’s just nuance to Ruby.

“It’s not the road we think it is?”

“Pshhh,” she says, blowing air into her cheeks. “Vale’s huge, it’s not like we can miss it.”

Yang pulls her sleep roll up over her shoulders and buries her nose in it, groaning again. Doesn’t seem like she’ll be able to convince Ruby to turn back until they reach the north sea.

They don’t reach the north sea either.

Instead, they spend several more days under the thick green of the woods, their travel hampered by the damp slowly seeping into the soil and also all their clothes. The more sodden Yang becomes, the more waspish her tone grows. She was never meant to endure this sort of creeping chill. Give her a warm beach any day.

The damp doesn’t quell Ruby, however, but nor does it do anything for her awareness. Yang is too busy trying to disappear into layers of fabric to pay much mind to their surrounds; consequently, she’s trailing along blindly behind Ruby when they walk headlong into an ambush.

An arrow whooshes past Yang’s head so close it nearly tips her hood back from her face. Another whispers from a different direction over Ruby’s shoulder before it lodges, quivering, in a nearby tree.

Before Ruby can produce more than a yelp, before Yang can do more than heel her horse beside her sister, before either of them can really take stock of the situation, several men are popping out of bushes and from behind trees. Most are armed with farm tools, only three have bows. Those three are, Yang notices briefly, also wearing the remains of shiny metal armour and white tabards.

Schnee soldiers.

“They don’t look much like Queen’s Guard,” says one of the men blocking their path.

From behind, a female voice says, “You don’t say. What gave them away? The lack of black?”

Yang twists at the waist, but the way the men before her shift their hands on the rough handles of their shovels and pitchforks makes her rethink that action. Her hands clench over the leather of her pommel while they wait and, after a beat longer, a woman circles in front of them. Her short brown hair is pulled back from her face by a knotted white band and she’s dressed about the same as they are: farm clothes. The way she holds her bow, however, suggests she’s something else.

“Who are you?” Ruby asks, bold as you like.

The woman smiles. “Hardly important,” she tells them. “The important question is, who are _you_?”

And Ruby being Ruby, leans forward in her saddle, a wide cheeky grin blooming across her face. “Well, Hardly Important,” she begins around barely contained laughter, “I’m Ruby. This is Yang. Who _is_ important here?”

Yang’s eyes had drifted closed the moment she heard that tone to her sister’s voice. No sense watching the arrows about to pincushion her. They flicker back open at the sound of maybe-almost-sincere chuckles.

“You have no idea where you are, do you?”

“On our way to Vale,” Ruby tells her, excited.

She takes a breath then and Yang leaps into it, more sense than eager just this once. “Heard about the fighting ending,” she adds. “Wanted to see if those conscripted from our village were okay, maybe coming home.”

The woman’s eyes narrow in a way that speaks of both danger and curiosity. “Conscripted to which side?”

Yang blinks and draws out a nondescript vowel sound. “Didn’t realise there were two sides doing the conscripting? So I assume they were fighting for Schnee?”

All around them, their attackers relax. The woman who leads them, however, barely shifts an inch. For a long, painful half minute, they just sit there, being weighed, analysed, catalogued and evaluated for their worth; perhaps in currency, perhaps in burial fees.

Then the woman tips her bow over her shoulder, lackadaisical as you please and says, “You can call me Deery. Come on. We’ll see if your friends survived the fighting.”

They are immediately led from the game trail and off into the forest proper. Trees close in on them in a claustrophobic way not twenty metres in and soon their horses are struggling to pick over broad, roping roots and through leaves piled so thickly around them the horses sink nearly to the knee. As they go, too, the trees change. It’s barely perceptible at first, just a few off-coloured leaves here and a trunk a slightly different shade there.

It’s Ruby who speaks up first. “The trees are all dying.”

Deery shoots her a smile over her shoulder. “Hardly.”

“They’re all red and droopy,” Ruby argues, waving one hand wildly.

“Welcome,” Deery says around her toothy grin, “to Forever Fall.”

A scrappy picture of her father’s tattered old map of the region fuzzes through her brain and her eyes go wide. “We’ve circled all the way around the east of Vale? Are you serious?”

“As war.” Deery bobs her head, eyes solemn. “I guess you missed the turn for Vale proper.”

“Ha!” Yang calls, voice bouncing from the dark boughed trees. “ _Told_ you we should’ve gone left.”

Ruby just rolls her eyes. “Whatever. This is pretty cool.”

“It’s cool until we get stabbed.”

One of the men speaks this time. “You won’t get stabbed,” he grouches. “Not unless you’re that new queen’s little spies.” He eyes them like he thinks they just might be at that.

With a soft hum, Ruby tells him sweetly, “Never met her.”

“Then you can keep your head.”

It’s hard to tell through the thick (but now red) of the trees, but Yang thinks they ride between those melancholy woods for another two hours, maybe three, before Deery leads them into something that might pass for an opening if it were just a touch less filled with trees.

And yet between those trees they find what could well be an entire village crammed into every space it can be. Ramshackle constructions thrown together with hasty need leaning against broad trunks, held up by them, using them as walls. Stables pitched so that even without roofs the horses are sheltered by low hanging branches, lean tos that lean more than even the ones that originally gave them the name teeter against one another and spill their contents – and their owners – onto streets that barely deserve the name, all hard packed mud and the occasional collection of spare planks thrown together over the places where the earth dips more than it should and fills with stagnant water.

There are _children_ darting between trees and almost-buildings and tents – there are a lot of tents, too; mostly worn, a variety of sun-faded colours and patched in more shades than Yang has seen market day dresses in her entire life. A laughing, muddy rainbow sequestered between the always-russet trees.

Her mouth falls open but no sound emerges. Ruby isn’t much better off, all she produces is a string of garbled nonsense noises until finally a few syllables line up into recognisable words and she splutters, “Who… did this… Vale?” and finally, “ _Why_?”

The men who had escorted them peel away and vanish into what doesn’t quite pass as a throng but still manages to be quite the crush of people. No doubt the lack of space between trees and structures and bodies makes it seem more crowded than it really is. Deery turns to them with sad eyes.

“The new queen’s forces are…” her mouth twists, “ruthless.” Yang gets the distinct sense that this is a profound understatement. “Further north where the court used to keep their lands, the villages all relied on the nobles. When the queen took power her people scoured those lands clean.” Deery hunches her shoulders, looks at the mournful people trudging about their shadowy lives, and sighs. “We are what’s left.”

Ruby’s eyes sparkle, glinting even in the low light with barely contained mischief and exhilaration. “The resistance,” she breathes, probably meaning for only Yang to hear, but Deery laughs, bitter and low in her throat.

“Sure, the queen’s people are calling us the White Fang. I suppose that’s fitting since her soldiers wear all black. Poetic, maybe.”

Yang slings her leg over the pommel and slides from her horse. “So you _are_ trying to take back the throne for the Schnees.” She hesitates before asking, “Jacques?”

“Dead.” That one word is filled with all the hurt in the world. “His eldest daughter is the commander of Vale’s military force. Don’t know if she’s alive or not, could be held captive in the castle. The middle daughter is still in the city. We’re not sure if she’s staying voluntarily or not but I’d say she was one of the first locked up. And the son,” Deery looks pointedly down what Yang imagines everyone here calls the main street at the only building that looks like some effort was put into. “He’s here. Whitley is the one I suppose you’d say we’re fighting for. This is his rebellion, even if he’s not leading it.”

“So… nothing good, then,” Yang mutters.

“Nothing good,” Deery agrees. She sucks in a breath so deep the structure of her neck is clearly visible. “Well, no use standing around. Come on, I’ll take you to see the folks in charge. Maybe they’ll know where your friends are.” She eyes them a beat before heading into the street. “Maybe they’ll let you stay.”

 

\--

\--

The building at the end of that street, the one that looks like effort was put into its construction, is apparently used as a headquarters of some kind. At least, that’s what Yang assumes based solely on the men in dented but polished steel breastplates and filthy white tabards who stand at attention by the doors. People bustle in and out, some carrying boxes or crates filled with paper and food, some with their arms piled high with rusted and bent lengths of metal that might have once been weapons, others cart bundles of fabric so tall it’s a wonder they can see where they’re going. Some walk with the practiced, intent gait of a person who has nowhere to be, nothing to do, but is determined to look busy so they aren’t assigned a menial task somewhere in the mud. Yang can’t help but grin at them, they look so much like Ruby trying to avoid stable mucking that it nearly makes her laugh.

Between all these people going about… _something_ , there are the children; they weave, knee-height, between adults, shrieking and laughing, kicking poorly stitched leather sacks in games of their own devising.

In total, it honestly reminds her of a more run down, more overcrowded version of home during the summer markets. But it’s off somehow, as if all the people are moving by rote, going about business because to do otherwise would be too horrible to contemplate. Even the children playing their games don’t seem… happy. More distracted. She can’t place a finger on it, but something about it all strikes her in a strangely uncomfortable way, lurching in the pit of her stomach telling her that something about this whole situation is decidedly _not right_.

Deery heaves the door open for them, shouldering her way past the guards with never so much as a bat of an eyelash. One of the breastplated men eyes Yang and Ruby in that distrustful way of all guards (so she assumes, merchant guards used to look at Ruby like that all the time) but make no deliberate move to stop them.

The inside of the building looks just like the outside, ramshackle, poorly constructed, a fire hazard. None of the seats and benches and table match, none of the walls have proper windows, it is the only building she saw with two floors and the stairs look like the kind of safety concern that would cause a statistically unlikely series of deaths and injuries.

People meander around in here too, not quite as many as outside and not quite as busy, but enough that Yang is put immediately to mind of an inn.

Naturally, Deery leads them up the safety violating stairs to the second floor and along the resulting hallway to the very last room. Here, she knocks politely (perhaps a little hesitantly) on the rough wood still bearing the burn marks of what Yang assumes to be the distillery that used it for produce.

A very quiet voice calls, “Come in,” from beyond the door and Deery opens it, letting them pass through first.

The first thing Yang notices is the table. Partly because it’s very well made, but mostly because the top of it is finely engraved with a detailed rendition of Vale city. The second thing she notices is the cold tension that fills every inch of the room. Around the table are a group of men and one woman. Or… she reconsiders that upon closer inspection. The group is two older men with full beards, one fellow around their age dressed all in black (an odd choice, she thinks, recalling what Deery had said earlier), and a clean-shaven boy who looks to be trying his best at a pale imitation of what he thinks manhood looks like. The woman has wild dark hair and chestnut skin, a red dot in the centre of her forehead; she’s also the only one sitting down, watching proceedings but not getting involved, perhaps.

They all five of them look up. Yang takes the brunt of their scrutiny and immediately screws her hands into fists, ready to throw down with any of these fools if he looks at Ruby (or herself) in a way she thinks even _vaguely_ threatening.

It’s the fellow their age who speaks. “Spies or strays?”

“Strays, I’d say,” replies Deery, walking past them to stand at the table with the rest. “Looking for friends.”

“Friend,” Yang interrupts. And when all five sets of eyes swivel back to her she clarifies, “Singular.”

The man Deery addressed - tall, slender, with a shock of deep red hair and a bandage around one side of his face, obscuring one eye - glares at her. “Friend,” he says flatly. “Singular. Does this friend have a name?”

Yang finds herself, in that moment, completely and utterly blank on the names of anyone conscripted from their village. Ruby, on the other hand, bless her, blurts, “Jaune Arc.”

There’s some exchanging of glances then before the youngest of the group, the kid with pale hair and paler skin, sighs and says, “I know the name, I think.”

One of the older men scoffs. “How could you know the name of this specific boy?”

“He was useless as a fighter. Nearly stabbed himself with a spear. He was assigned to my sister’s protection rota because it was assumed he wouldn’t have to fight. But…”

The room fills with a silent and cloying regret.

Ruby clutches at Yang’s wrist and asks in the smallest voice ever heard, “He’s… dead?” She’s so quiet and fragile that it’s a shock those words don’t break upon being released into the world.

The boy bobs his head. “I’d say so. When the city was taken… Well. I can’t see how he survived, anyway. I’m sorry.”

Ruby’s grip on her arm tightens until she’s sure it’ll bruise. “How can we help?”

Yang doesn’t realise she’s the one who’s spoken in such a cold, flat tone until everyone is staring at her.

“Help?” asks the other older man.

“He’s…” Ruby chokes on the word and tries again, even softer again. “ _Was_ , I guess. He _was_ our friend. How can we help?”

The young blond boy walks around the table and stands in front of them, back stiff, shoulders square, chin up. He weighs them like Deery did, with icy blue eyes. The hairs on Yang’s arms lift under the scrutiny.

Eventually he says, “My name is Whitley Schnee. This is Adam Taurus,” he indicates the red-headed fellow, “and my two most trusted lieutenants, Bourgogne and Foret. You’ve met Deery.” She alone gives them a cute little wave; the rest barely react. Whitley leans in a little. “And you are?”

“Ruby Rose! And my sister Yang Xiao Long, at your service.”

“Well, Ruby Rose and her sister,” Whitley says smoothly, the barest of smiles tickling the edges of his features. “How about we find you something to do, then?” He inclines his head half an inch and Taurus steps away from the table to usher them from the room. Yang shoots one last glance at the woman who did not say a single word before she follows him.

He leads them back down the hall, down the stairs, out the door, down the street. Down. The hairs on Yang’s arms prickle again.

“What do you do?” Adam asks them, his voice as disinterested as she thinks it’s possible to be.

“Farmers,” Yang tells him without elaboration. Something about his brusque demeanour, something in his single blue eye, something in the coil of his muscles makes her hesitant to say more.

Ruby, however, has no such compunction. “You’d be surprised the effort it takes to hang onto a rowdy sheep, you know. It’s hard work chopping all that wood, running around in the sun all day.” She slaps a fist into her other palm. “Throw whatever you like at us.”

He sighs, but Yang thinks he mumbles ‘farmers’ under his breath. Adam leads them further, down some alleys so narrow her shoulders brush the sides of the buildings, down a slight slope, down into the trees. Another, smaller, space opens up before them and here, away from what passes for everyday life, there are soldiers. The rest of the men with the once-white tabards and the usually-polished breastplates.

“Let’s test your mettle then.”

He crooks two fingers at some of the men nearest them and they stand, confused, but wander over. The backs of their gloves are armoured, she notices up close, the knees of their pants bulge in a way that suggest they’re wearing perhaps leather underneath, even their boots are steel toed.

Adam waves at the men. “Take your gloves off and have at it. We’re going to find out what farmers can do.”

The men swap wary, confused glances but follow the instruction. Slowly.

Yang immediately lowers her body and lifts her fists. Ruby is immediately wide-eyed and searching for escape. Brash and impulsive she may be, but prepared for fisticuffs she is not.

Both of these soldiers are taller and wider than Yang and Ruby, but all that means is they’re probably not very fast. When one takes a swing at Yang’s face, she drops below it easily and takes a shot at his stomach. Her knuckles connect painfully with the hard leather below his tabard.

She scoots back as he tries to grab her around the waist and shakes the hand out. Armour, noted.

The other soldier moves then, and she’s momentarily distracted watching Ruby duck and weave around his fists. So much so that she nearly takes the next punch directly to an eye. As it is, the blow grazes her temple and for a second she sees spots.

She lashes out with a foot to keep him at bay and her heel clips his knee. Sure enough, there is definitely some kind of padded leather there; not enough to jar, but too much to make this easy. Finding a weak spot on this guy will not be simple. Yang dances back and to the side to avoid his next flurry of blows and only manages to get in one glancing swing of her own. It hits him under the left arm and she smiles, there’s no padding there.

Yang doesn’t bother regrouping, she dives in and kicks him in the side as hard as she can. It’s enough to stagger him and she punches him again, twice, a third time, focusing on that spot on his side. She hopes it bruises.

He swats her hand away and lunges blindly for her. This is all the opening she needs to take a solid crack at his face. Her knuckles sting, skin split where she connected with his teeth. But his lip is bleeding equally and he smiles.

“Feisty,” he mutters.

Yang beams sweetly and slaps her hands into his ear. He sits down.

When she turns to look for Ruby she sees her sister has scooped a length of wood from somewhere, perhaps the haft of a broken polearm judging by the jagged end. She’s spinning it through her hands like she used to spin the broomstick, blocking every throw her opponent makes. None of them are particularly elegant and most don’t even look very effective, but it’s enough of a redirect that he has to try again.

The very first time she tries to strike back, however, the soldier wraps one large hand around the staff and yanks, ripping it from Ruby’s hands and pulling her face-first into the newly muddied ground. He lifts the staff as if to bring it down on Ruby’s head and Yang _loses_ it.

She closes the space between them in two long, leaping strides before she’s bounding up, growling, onto the soldier’s shoulders. She buries her hands in his hair and pulls with all her might, ripping clumps from his scalp and he honest to god _squeals_ with surprise. Yang hooks her knees under his arms and leans backwards so fiercely that he loses his balance, drops the staff, tries to roll and protect his face with his hands.

He lands awkwardly, Yang lands on her knees by his head. She grabs the staff and, with a roar, cracks the butt of it into his nose.

The only thing that stops her from raising it and smacking him again is Ruby’s hand on her forearm.

“I think you won, Yang.”

“I’ll say,” says the soldier she’d knocked down first. “Quite the temper you have there, kid.”

Yang throws the staff into the mud. “No one hurts my sister.”

“Evidently.”

They all turn to look at Adam, who (Yang is a little embarrassed to admit) she’d quite forgotten was watching.

“I’ll send your sister with Deery,” he continues. “She might make a useful scout, light on her feet, fast. But you,” his voice drops in a way Yang doesn’t like one single bit, “you are coming with me.”

Adam doesn’t wait to see if she’ll follow him or ask questions or anything, just turns and marches further into his little wannabe-military camp. Ruby latches onto her arm again but Yang just offers her a smile more confident and assured than she feels.

“It’ll be fine, Ruby. You go find Deery and I’ll meet you outside that building later, alright?”

Ruby says, “Alright,” but her eyes scream _liar, liar, liar_.

 

\--

 

She follows Adam at a brisk clip through the tents, weaving between soldiers in assorted varieties of armour and racks of weapons – mostly spears and bows – and softly burning fires ringed by halos of sleepy rebels. Some of the soldiers wear those breastplates and tabards, but most wear less fancy gear; leather vests and braces, tatty old messenger caps and thick woollen coats, she even spots a few wearing darker clothes than the browns and greens and rusts of the majority. No doubt the colours are meant to help them blend into the wilderness, what the black coats are for she has no idea; Deery had said black was the queen’s colour.

It doesn’t take them long before Adam is sweeping aside a tent flap and waving her in. Once again, she’s greeted by a cluster of people only this time they’re not standing over a map table; instead there are three individuals seemingly doing their best to ignore each other. One woman is seated cross-legged on the ground with a truly terrifyingly large sword across her knees, running a whetstone along its length with a slow, soft rasp. One of the two men is inspecting the fletchings on a pile of arrows in minute detail, some he carefully slides into a quiver and some he throws at the ground so hard the points stick and he’s left with a pincushion of unsatisfactory arrows. His bow is taller than Ruby. And the last fellow is standing around with a somewhat bored posture reading a book with one hand and rolling a dagger across the back of his other hand.

None of them look up.

“Fennec, I need an outfit.”

The man reading glances up, sees Adam indicate Yang, gives her a single sweeping once over and bobs his head before ducking out the flap.

“Umber, Miles, this is Yang.”

The woman, Umber, lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t stop her sharpening.

“When we take everyone out tomorrow morning she’ll be coming with,” Adam explains in response to her unasked question. “Consider it a test run.”

Miles folds his arms, abandoning his arrow inspection (arrowspection?). “You’re already looking to replace Karp?”

Adam shoots him a look. “There are five districts and we only have four active squads at the moment. We need that replacement.”

Umber’s other eyebrow joins the first.

“You didn’t see her beat up a pair of fully armoured Schnee soldiers,” he tells her drolly. “She’ll do.”

Yang is starting to feel a lot like a leg of lamb. “Hey. I’m right here. What will do? Replace who? I’d like a say thanks.”

“Karp was our fifth team leader,” Miles says.

“One of the few lieutenants who came with us from Menagerie and survived the fighting,” Adam continues.

“A talented grifter,” Miles goes on. “He and his squad went out on a solo run through one of the nearby districts and got caught by the queen’s guard. Few made it back alive, but none of them really have the skills to be redistributed amongst us.”

She folds her arms and leans right up into Adam’s space. To his (moderate) credit, he doesn’t so much as flinch. “I’m flattered and all, but I am _not_ qualified to lead any kind of troops.”

Umber huffs.

“She’s right,” Miles agrees. “The fifth squad doesn’t so much need _leading_ as they need…” He rolls his lips together in search of the right word.

Adam provides it with a flat look of complete disapproval, “Babysitting.”

Miles grins, all canines and sharp edges. “I did mention he was a grifter, right? His group was smaller, they didn’t pick fights so much as they went around trying to cosy up to important members of the queen’s guard for information.”

“Swindling? Not _really_ my thing, boys,” Yang drawls with an eyeroll.

“I gather.”

Adam is soft when he explains, “They don’t need more swindlers, they need someone to watch their backs in case the worst happens. The two…”

“Bouncers?” Miles supplies helpfully.

“Sure. They were killed along with Karp.”

Her mouth makes a little ‘oh’. “I have to mother hen them.” She shrugs in a short, loose motion. “Alright.”

“Good.”

Something in Adam’s eyes is not what she would define as _reassuring_ but then Fennec is back and she’s being handed a pile of black clothes and told to put them on, get some food, make sure to eat. They leave at first light.

And when she asks Miles why they wear black he says: “Because that’s the queen’s colour. It’s our pass into whatever district we like with no questions asked.”

And she believes him.

 

\--

\--

Dawn breaks late between those red trees, it casts a soft pink glow through the canopy, dripping liquid from blood red leaves. Yang blinks bleary eyed through a fog stained equally red by the sleepy sunlight bleeding through every slight gap it can find, flickering in guttering candlelit puddles on a cracked wax-leaf floor and hopes the colour isn’t a portent of the day to come.

Adam rouses the camp, the whole damn village, to see them off. It’s a grand affair made morose by the hour and the ever-present ominous colouration of their surrounds. Only the soldiers in their metal stay behind, and it’s bloodstained metal this morning, nothing grand about it, only foreboding.

She’s too tired for this. But she meets Adam’s column of black-clad spies and rebels on their way back through Forever Fall. Ruby stands beside Deery and watches through her bangs with eyes that still pierce arrow-sharp between her ribs and poison her with more accusations of _liar, you won’t come back, will you, liar_.

Yang doesn’t let her gaze linger on her sister long, she can’t without feeling the toxins pound harder, faster, through her veins. Instead she watches the play of horrible red light on the back of the man walking in front of her and when she swears she sees the light turn into wide gashes, Yang fixes her eyes on the leaves under her feet, listens to them crackle beneath her boots, the boots of those around her, crunching like rain.

She pays no mind to where they’re actually going, just follows. Maybe that should worry her but then again, she doesn’t know where she’s going or how to get there anyway. Miles walks beside her for a way, explaining what happened to Karp, some of the rumours that returned along with news of his death. Mention of how Winter, the eldest Schnee child, is still alive and fighting for the black queen, a slave to her will. Something about a secret magic the black queen uses to keep everyone docile, something that fools the people in the city into thinking she’s on their side.

“Don’t listen to what any of the citizens say,” Miles tells her. “No one really knows for sure, but it’s possible whatever this enchantment is can be passed along by word of mouth alone.”

Yang knows nothing about magic – not _real_ magic, only the fairy tale stuff – so maybe that’s possible? Surely it would have to be very powerful then.

Miles doesn’t give her a chance to ask, though, just keeps talking about all the weird and wicked ways this witch queen keeps her subjects under her thrall.

“Oh, here.” Miles stuffs a hand into the satchel slung over his shoulder. “Adam gives these to everyone.”

He passes her a bundle wrapped in oiled leather and bound with string. Rations.

“Huh?”

“Adam’s family grows magic fruit in Menagerie,” he says. “The best! Most of it is just to provide strength or speed or endurance, but there’s a grape in there,” a single grape, she notes with a raised brow, is weird, but he just keeps going, “if you get caught, eat it. They help with magic resistances.”

She rolls the bundle between her hands and sticks it into her bag. “Has anyone had to eat one before?”

“Well, no. Mostly the queen’s guard don’t take prisoners so there’s no chance. But Whitley makes sure to keep the fruits coming from Menagerie anyway.”

“Didn’t know the Faunus and the Schnees were such good pals.”

Miles shrugs. “They weren’t. But it was the Menagerie ambassador who started the coup and Adam’s family, along with a lot of the other influential people in Menagerie, decided that this made the Faunus look bad so they agreed to help.”

Yang’s eyebrows skyrocket past her hairline and into the stratosphere. “Faunus fighting Faunus? Bet that rankles.”

He huffs a sigh. “You have no idea.”

Umber appears at his elbow then and they peel away, directing other members of what she assumes to be their respective squads away from the main party. Miles takes his further into the woods but Umber’s band make a beeline through the trees towards where the main road is. Or at least, that’s where she was told the main road should be.

Then Yang is left alone with the four people in _her_ squad, none of whom she knows and with no real clue of where they’re headed.

Until one of them sidles up to her, a soft smile in place, her tawny hair pulled into a tail under her broad brimmed hat. She looks - chewing on dried meat from the rations, with her thigh high boots, soft leather pants and undone vest - exactly like the ranchers Yang knows back home. Her tanned skin is even dusted with a heavy sprinkling of freckles from hours in the sun.

“Ilia,” the woman says. “You’re Yang.”

“Yep,” she agrees. “Yang who still doesn’t really know what’s going on or how this happened.”

Ilia laughs softly and tips her hat back with one finger. “Oh yeah, that’s how Adam does things. No screening, no forethought, just throw people in the deep end. You’ll get used to it. He has a nose for talent.”

Yang grimaces. “I’m flattered, but I’m a farmer not a fighter.”

“You’re sure?” The corners of her lips and both eyebrows tilt up in a secretive smile. “I saw you beat up those two Schnee fools.”

“Luck.”

“It’s not luck to know to look for a weak spot.” She shrugs. “Besides, we’re heading to the agriculture district today so you probably won’t have to punch anyone. Just keep an eye out for anyone in the queen’s black with silver bars across the chest.”

“Who are they?”

“Captains and inquisitors,” she says. “Full bars are high ranks, others will only have knots, but it’s the full bars who cause the most trouble.”

“Why?”

Ilia just shrugs again. “They ask questions.”

Yang eyes her for a long moment before judging her to be serious. Then she asks, “Were you there?” When Ilia shoots her a confused look she elaborates, “When the group was attacked last time?”

She sighs. “I didn’t see it happen. I was on a mark, but I saw the aftermath. We were the lucky ones. That’s what Adam told us, anyway. Doesn’t feel like luck to be the one who survives.”

Yang bobs her head like she has any idea what it’s like. All she really knows is what it’s like to be left behind. “So if we’re caught…”

Ilia looks up at her, a sad, laughing sparkle glittering behind her eyes and watery smile. She lifts a hand to pat Yang’s cheek. “Don’t get caught.”

They walk in silence for perhaps another half hour before they step out from under the now green trees and into what is very clearly farmland, maybe even some of the same farmland she and Ruby had passed through the other day. She sticks by Ilia as they walk down dirt tracks and across fields of waving, knee-high grasses. In a paddock near their path a herd of spotted cows grazes but pays them no mind.

Finally, they reach a settlement.

“This is the southern extent of Vale,” Ilia tells her. “Technically part of the city, even though it doesn’t look it.” She leans into Yang’s shoulder and indicates a building along the way. Most of the structures are simple wood, mud brick, rough stone, the sort of thing she’s used to, but this one is grander on all scales. “Outpost. Avoid it. Keep your eyes out for guards in black and strike up a conversation with them if you can. Be subtle, ask a few questions and move on. Don’t talk to the villagers if you can help it. Adam is paranoid about this idea of verbally conferred magic.” She claps Yang on the shoulder then and sings, “Good luck!” before moving off to do… whatever.

The other three have already split so that leaves Yang standing in borrowed (stolen?) black clothes, perhaps impersonating one of the black queen’s henchmen in the middle of a street she doesn’t know in a town she doesn’t recognise.

She misses Ruby in a sudden, lurching way that makes her want to vomit.

Only one or two of the villagers give her so much as a passing glance before ducking their heads and shuffling on about their business. Doesn’t appear there’s much love lost between queen’s guard and workers. Her hands clench again without permission.

Yang forces herself to relax. She’s not here to pick a fight; probably couldn’t win one if she did.

So she takes Ilia’s advice and meanders down the street with no particular destination in mind. She doesn’t stop to talk though, doesn’t know what she’d say. Sure she could _probably_ come up with something in a pinch, but given this really is the deep end, she thinks it’s better to just… not do that.

Of _course_ the one time she decides to display an ounce of actual caution is also the _one time_ a fight finds her.

“Oi!”

She looks around without even thinking about it and comes face to face with a guy in the black of the guard. He also - and it confuses her greatly - has a messenger cap on his head, tilted to one side. It’s blue. Bright blue. The sort of blue that commonfolk don’t have access to.

Her eyes drop to his coat.

Ah yes. A silver bar. Naturally.

“Don’t know you,” he says conversationally. “You new?”

“Yep!” She pops her ‘p’ and slaps on a huge grin. “Got a little lost, actually. Not _completely_ sure I’m in the right place. This is the agriculture district, right?”

And he smiles back. “Sure is. Where’d you come from?”

Yang leans a little closer and drops her voice  down low. “I’m fresh out of training actually,” she confides. “I think I was sent here because I’m flat out useless with a sword and guarding cows seems easy.”

He bursts out laughing and throws a hand at her. “I’m Neptune.”

“Yang.”

Neptune ducks his head to return her secretive whisper. “If not swords, then what?”

For answer she lifts her gloved fists and mimes punching him in the shoulder. “I pack a mean wallop.”

“Well then.” He slings an arm around her shoulder and guides her towards (guess where!) the outpost Ilia had indicated. “I’m going to introduce you to my best friend. I would _love_ to see him knocked on his ass.”

She laughs and it’s only a little bit forced. “I’m sure we can arrange something to that effect.”

“Excellent.”

But, you know, she’s managed not to get stabbed by this fellow thanks only to her natural charm, yet it wouldn’t be _fair_ for this encounter to end amicably, would it? Oh no.

She _feels_ the air around her chill and looks over when she realises a number of the commonfolk have dropped their bundles and made themselves scarce. Her brows crease. Time slows imperceptibly.

A door to her right is thrown open with an almighty crash and Ilia comes tumbling out onto the dirt. Following her ungraceful exit is a pair of guards, faces stern as cold stone. And in _their_ wake is a woman with an atmosphere entirely separate from the one Yang lives in.

Her stride is slow, sure, confident. A slender sword hangs from her hip. She _exudes_ the sort of chill that greets you in the pearly pre-dawn light of midwinter, frost billowing around you with each breath, fingers chilled even in thick gloves, icicles hanging from the eaves in such thickly grouped clusters they’re nearly indistinguishable from one another.

This woman is a midnight blizzard, an avalanche of barely restrained fury and justice. But it’s _her_ version of justice, not the one that’s actually written in law books.

A chill runs down Yang’s spine and back up for good measure. She is immediately terrified of this woman dressed all in white from her pristine boots to her loose breeches to her billowy shirt and stiff high collared coat.

Even her hair is white and Yang gasps.

“That’s a Schnee,” she whispers without meaning to.

“Winter Schnee,” Neptune says, head bobbing. “She’s… wait.”

The look he gives her then is cold as the Schnee is, calculating, unsure. His hand lands on the hilt of his sword.

“You’re…”

She punches him square in the nose and dashes for Ilia, throwing herself between the woman scrabbling in the dirt and the business end of Winter’s sword.

“Run, Ilia,” she says, focusing only on the sword.

Ilia doesn’t listen. Naturally she doesn’t.

“You’re _alive_ ,” she splutters, spitting gravel out of her mouth. “But…”

Her sword lowers very, very slowly. Her voice too is ice when she says, “Arrest them.”

Yang spins on her heel, fist up, ready to clock whoever gets too close; but some dumb blonde idiot whacks her over the head with a stick and it’s a _hard_ hit too. She falls to her knees and the reverse end of the staff cracks her on the temple.

Black rolls over her before her head hits the dirt.

 

\--

 

She’s unrestrained when she wakes. But the spots dancing across her vision and the _pounding_ in her temple might as well be tonne and a half shackles. In trying to sit up the entire world spins around her in glorious, agonising swirls and she groans, slumping back until her head rests against cold stone.

“Sorry, Yang.”

Blinking her eyes against the gloom, Yang can just barely make out another shape lying curled on the floor in the corner of what she is slowly coming to realise is a damp little cell. Three stone walls and one thick metal door with perhaps an inch or two gap between the bottom and the floor and a grill of bars at head height. She stretches, but it’s not wide, probably not even five feet across and her hands and feet crack against the rough walls before she’s fully extended.

It’s deeper than it is wide, though, maybe ten or twelve feet. As her eyes adjust, through both darkness and spots, she recognises the other inhabitant as Ilia.

“Why are you sorry?” she rasps through a throat drier than a summer drought.

“Got us caught. They took our rations, we’ll probably be executed in a day or two. After they’ve starved and questioned us.” There’s a strange strain to her voice that Yang can’t place.

“I thought they didn’t take prisoners?”

Ilia curls up tighter and she realises the warble in her tone is tears. “I knew Winter. Or… I suppose, I knew her sister, Weiss.”

Yang’s brow furrows. “Knew her?”

Sucking in a deep breath, Ilia rolls over to face Yang, making the sort of penetrating eye contact that’s almost uncomfortable. “I _knew_ her, Yang.”

Her mouth drops open in a little ‘oh’ and then she makes the same sound, “ _Oh_.”

Ilia’s shoulders hunch up higher around her ears, knees tucking further into her chest. “I was assigned to the guard team for the Menagerie ambassador. I knew his daughter a little, we might’ve even been friends. That’s how I met Weiss… and she…” Ilia snuffles, closes her eyes. “Didn’t matter to her that I was Faunus.”

Realisation strikes her like that staff had earlier. “You were there. You saw the coup happen.”

“I’d been reassigned to work with Weiss. Something, something, cooperation between Faunus and the Schnee family being good for relations. The ambassador’s idea. Several of us were transitioned. I was _supposed_ to be with Weiss when the coup started. Don’t know what happened to her.”

Yang scrabbles closer to her, rests a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Ilia.”

There’s no mistaking the tears on her face this time when she looks up. “If she’s dead, Yang, then it _is_ my fault. And Winter… I –” Her throat clenches, voice catches. “What’s she _doing_ here? Why fight with the black queen?”

Yang sighs. “I don’t know half of what’s happened, but… maybe we’ll find out.”

“Not sure I want to know, Yang, I’ll be honest.”

“Knowing the truth is better than spending the rest of your life thinking you had something to do with it. Maybe Winter has the answers.”

Ilia goes back to curling herself into the tightest, tiniest ball possible. “As if she’d tell me anything.”

Yang squeezes her shoulder. “Ilia… have you ever met the black queen?”

She snuffles again. “No. I heard the ambassador was taking over after the coup, but he died. Whoever took control… well they keep that under wraps, I guess.”

“Then don’t you think it’s possible there’s more to this than you’re aware of? Why would Winter fight her sister, _kill_ her sister?”

“I don’t know, Yang. The same reason she’s fighting her brother?”

And yeah, okay, so that’s a good, solid rebuttal.

A clang echoes somewhere along the chilled corridor before she can come up with further argument. Ilia buries her face further into her knees, but Yang looks around. She can practically _feel_ the ice creeping down the hall outside with every ringing step taken.

After a painfully long wait, a face appears in the grill.

Winter Schnee.

Keys rattle and the door protests as it’s unlocked and swung open.

Winter fills the doorway, all ice and snow and fury.

“Ilia,” she says in that same frosty tone.

Ilia doesn’t respond.

Winter stands there. Staring. Unmoving. She might as well be a sculpture.

It’s an eon, an ice age, before Winter asks softly, “Why fight for my brother? You loved Weiss.”

Ilia whimpers.

Her cold blue eyes drift from Ilia to Yang. “Who are you?”

“Yang.”

Winter waits.

“Yang Xiao Long.”

There’s a beat and then Winter steps aside. Neptune appears beside her, steps in, lifts shackles and clasps them around Yang’s wrists, hauling her up when he stands.

She’s dragged from the cell and behind her Winter snaps it closed with a bang that’s awfully final in the way it echoes through the block.

He yanks her forward until she’s eye to eye with Winter Schnee (who is actually nearly as tall as Yang and even missing that last half inch is ten times more imposing).

“Time for some answers.”

This is the moment, being tugged through the cell block and along narrow servant passageways, that Yang realises leaving home sure _was_ an adventure. An adventure in losing all control over everything ever. A fire kindles low in her gut, the kind she usually expends beating up hay bales, so Neptune is very lucky she’s in chains or he’d be catching her fist with his face again.

She spends the whole walk nurturing that flame, stoking it, feeding it with anger and fear and frustration until she’s practically vibrating with it. Fuelling it with all the ideas of the black queen she’s been given, a witch, a monster, cruel and unforgiving; a Winter in a darker palette with eyes the colour of night terrors.

So when she’s brought to a jarring stop outside a simple door panelled in warm wood, it’s a bit of a surprise. This is not the door of someone attempting to instil fear.

This is the door of a softly spoken librarian, more like.

Her fire flickers uncertainly.

Winter gives her a pointed look before pushing the door inwards without even knocking. The inside of the room is the same as the door, warm panels, soft drapes, low burning lanterns. Bookshelves line the walls, a mahogany desk sits under the only window with the curtains pulled back and at that desk, in a well-padded armchair, sits a young woman in a purple day dress reading a book.

She looks up, no doubt catching Winter out of the corner of her eye, closing the pages around one finger. Her eyes are the warmest golden brown and her face is not that of a wicked witch out of a fairy tale, but rather of someone who has been saddled with something she’d rather never have even looked at. Around the corners of her eyes and mouth, worry lines compete with happy crinkles, newer anxieties fighting against older smiles.

Winter bows at the waist and so does Neptune.

“One of Whitley’s spies,” Winter says without preamble in a voice ten degrees warmer than previously. “She was with Ilia.”

The woman stands rather abruptly, places her book carefully on the table.

“Ilia is with Whitley? I thought she’d…”

“Apparently not. Thought you might like to ask some questions.” She inclines her head and Neptune drops her chain, passes the key to the woman.

She turns the key over in her hands, staring at it for a long beat. Then she looks up at Winter. “You can leave us. You too, Neptune.” She pauses and adds quietly, “Do what you want with Ilia.”

Yang turns, aghast, to Winter, strains against her shackles. “No!”

Her plea is ignored entirely. Winter and Neptune bow again and back out of the room. Yang steps after them and slams her joined fists against the wood. Bangs a second time, a third. It doesn’t give and they don’t come back so she spins on the woman, fire licking higher again.

She finds the woman seated again in her chair, one hand rubbing over her forehead, the other flicking back through the pages of her book. “What’s your name?” she asks softly.

Everything about this screams in her bones that something is _wrong_ and it stops her in her tracks once again, unable to storm over there and shake her by the collar. It’s _wrong_. Why send her guards away? Why ask her name? _Why_ is she being so casual? Having captured one of her enemies shouldn’t she be violent? Where is the torture? This is almost… almost…

Civil.

“Yang,” she replies against her better judgement (though she had told Winter earlier so what’s the point, even). Remembering the encounter with Winter she adds, “Xiao Long.”

Having found her place again, the woman slides a marker off the table to keep her place before she closes the book once more. “I’m Blake Belladonna,” she says. “I’m sure you know me as the black queen.”

Once more, she strains against her chains. “What do you want?”

Blake’s fingers furl into her palms around the key, slowly but fiercely, until her knuckles go white and crack. “Adam Taurus.”

She rolls her eyes. “What do you want from _me_?”

There’s a long moment where all Blake does is stare at the key, rubbing the pad of her thumb across the teeth. When she looks up there’s something in her eyes that forces Yang back a step. She takes another step back when Blake moves towards her. Her third step backwards is halted when her shoulders hit the door.

All Blake does, though, is grab her by the manacles tethering her wrists together and unsnaps them, letting the metal clank to the floor. “I want you to tell me the lies Adam and Whitley are selling.”

Unconsciously, Yang rubs at her wrists, eyes flicking between Blake’s, convinced she’ll find more than a hint of deception in them. But all she can see in them is determination. And… sadness.

“Look, my sister and I met the man yesterday.”

“And what were you told?”

She shrugs. “Not much. I don’t know why you’d ask me rather than literally any of the other White Fang folks you could’ve caught.”

Blake tilts her head. “What do you mean? I could’ve caught them?”

“Well, yeah. Adam said your soldiers kill plenty of his supporters.”

She actually laughs at that; a sharp, bitter thing at odds with her eyes. “Oh yes, he would say that. No. I’ve never given an order for his _White Fang_ to be killed. Only captured. And you’re the first two.”

Yang blinks twice like a damn fool, mouth dropping open just a little. Blake, at least, seems amused by her confusion. She takes a few paces back, gives Yang room to breathe, to catch her bearings (no easy task, really, given everything) and motions for her to sit as she sinks back into her armchair.

“I dare say the only reason you were caught is because Winter recognised Ilia and you clearly knew _her_ ,” Blake explains.

“Then… what happened to all the people Adam says have died?”

For answer, Blake lifts something from under her table: one of the provision parcels. She pulls the string binding it loose and unfolds the oiled fabric to expose the food within. As she’d been told, there’s an end of bread, some cheese, a few pieces of fruit, and an individually swathed item that Blake unwraps with the utmost care.

“Faunus,” she begins, pulling a pin from her hair, “are more attuned to magic than any other people in the world. That’s how our farms and orchards can produce magical crops. The trick is,” she goes on as she stabs the recently revealed grape (which is decidedly _not_ the usual, appealing green, but rather slightly foggy with brown), “proving to those who _can’t_ sense the magic in them what it’s used for.”

When Blake pulls the pin from the grape, a thick ooze begins to weep from the hole. It’s… not a healthy grape colour, but instead the same shade as fresh blood.

“That… doesn’t look right,” Yang admits in a soft voice.

“Right. What did he tell you this would do?”

Yang takes a slow stride closer to get a better look at the grape and it’s uncanny bleeding. “One of his lieutenants said it would help with resistance to magical torture, I guess.”

“It’s poison. This would kill you before you finished chewing.”

No one had ever had to eat one, Miles had said. Because the queen didn’t take captives. And yet here she is, living, breathing proof to the contrary. “Yeah… that seems about right.” She looks back at Blake and her warm, sad eyes.

“What else?” she asks. Unlike Adam and his lieutenants who put her on edge, something about Blake sets her at ease. Some black queen.

“The Menagerie ambassador started the coup.”

“My father,” Blake says. “He never had much luck talking to Jacques or building bridges between him and Menagerie. Weiss though… A perfectly reasonable sort when provided with enough evidence and logic. Since Winter has military rank she was ineligible by Vale law to also be heir, which meant next in line was Weiss, and my father had a very good rapport with her.”

Yang shakes her head. “I don’t get it.” She waves a hand from her chin to her hips. “Farmer. Speak stupid to me.”

Blake tilts her head to the side and the faintest shadow of a smile quirks at her lips as her eyes follow Yang’s hand motion. “Oh, I don’t think you’re stupid at all. Jacques didn’t like the idea that his daughter would… _undo_ his life’s work. He wanted to leave the throne to Whitley instead, but… He’d already named Weiss as heir and the only things that could change that are her voluntary abdication or her untimely death.”

“Her _dad_ had her killed?” Yang’s voice very nearly hits the sort of screech she considers Ruby’s exclusive forte.

She just laughs. “Oh no. Weiss is much too slippery for that. She came to my father and he hid her. It’s all a bit of a mess after that. It was like watching politics in fast forward. Whitley had his father killed and made it look like mine was responsible. _That’s_ what started the coup.”

“And… where does Adam fit into all this?”

Her mouth twists sourly. “Long story,” Blake says, waving it away. “More politics, a betrothal, he’s a horrible person, I left Menagerie to join my parents, he followed. Whatever. The point is he ended up in the perfect position to make a show of good faith between Menagerie and Vale and he’s exploiting that to his gain.”

Yang’s brows crumple over her eyes. “And why are you _telling_ me this?”

Blake just smiles. “Because I don’t take prisoners.”

But there’s something in her voice that says there’s more to it, something that says it’s about time to make a move, something that says she’s lost enough.

Not that Yang’s going to make it easy for her. She folds her arms sternly across her chest. “Last time someone told me a sad story and I agreed to help I ended up being roped into some kinda conspiracy thing. I’m not making that mistake a second time.”

“Understandable. What can I tell you?” Her eyes sparkle with mirth maybe, perhaps frustration or impatience. Amusement seems most likely.

Yang tips forward just slightly so she’s looming the tiniest bit over Blake. The queen, to her credit, doesn’t so much as bat an eyelid. “Tell me what Winter’s doing with Ilia.”

Blake stands, immediately encroaching on Yang’s space but she does it with such confidence and self-possession that Yang must either back off or risk their heads colliding.

“I’ll do you one better,” Blake says, stepping around her without leaving her bubble until the last possible second. “I’ll show you.”

Yang hesitates for a lot less time than she perhaps should before she groans and follows Blake from the room.

 

\--

 

“Well I’ll admit that’s not what I expected.”

The door clicks closed behind them, Winter on the other side and Blake looking at her with this funny little smile. A miniature version of Winter sits on a desk in the centre of a room lined with _mirrors_ , of all things.

Ilia is wrapped around her neck in a hug that should probably be considered attempted murder.

“This is Weiss, I take it?”

“That’s her.”

“The mirrors?”

“Give her a moment.”

They watch as Weiss’s wide eyes soften and slide closed, her arms coming up shakily to return Ilia’s hug. From the way Ilia’s shoulders shudder, she’s crying again.

Blake takes a half step. “Princess?”

“Shut up, Blake,” Weiss mumbles without opening her eyes. She says something quietly then and Ilia sobs. Weiss tucks her face into her neck and Yang is suddenly all kinds of uncomfortable.

Blake crosses the rest of the space and lays a hand on her shoulder. “I need your talents, Weiss. Ilia’s not going anywhere. Not this time.”

“I can stay?” Ilia asks, looking around with incredulous, teary eyes.

“Of course. I –”

Then Blake has Ilia wrapped around her fiercely.

“Weiss…” Blake whispers, returning Ilia’s hug but staring over her shoulder.

Weiss sighs and slips from the table. “What do you need?”

Carefully disentangling herself from Ilia, Blake says, “Adam.”

“You’ve _got_ to get over this,” Weiss drawls with a dramatic eye roll.

“I want to find him. This whole bit of his is getting old.”

“Yes, of course, and this has nothing to do with what you asked me to look up last time does it? No absolutely not.” She shoots a pointed – perhaps questioning – look at Yang even as she answers her own question and stops before one of the mirrors. “Don’t know what you think this will accomplish, Blake.”

“Just…” Blake sighs.

Weiss waves her off and lifts both hands, palms out. “ _Magic mirror on the wall, show us he most treacherous of all_.”

The perfect reflection of Weiss whorls around, a soapy rainbow of colour slicked across the otherwise normal silver surface. Weiss disappears, and Adam takes her place in the mirror. He’s sitting down, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle, his hands fiddling with the bandage over his face, unknotting it until it winds free and exposes the nasty wound that claimed his left eye. The flesh there is burned, his eye seared shut, a rough, raw red colour; the inside of the bandage is stained a colour to match. He’s redressing it, apparently, but they can’t see anything around him other than the camp stool he’s seated on.

After a moment the image wobbles and that soap-slick swirl sweeps him away, so Weiss can return.

“Told you,” she says, lowering her hands. “I can’t see somewhere I don’t know.”

“He’s in Forever Fall,” Yang puts in without preamble.

All three of them turn to her; Blake and Weiss with matching wariness and Ilia with barely concealed shock.

“Why tell us that?” asks Weiss in a much more clipped tone than the one she’d been using before.

Yang’s mouth opens but she finds no words with which to reply. Her eyes slip from Weiss to Ilia and then to Blake. What could she say that would satisfy them anyway? That Adam and his camp had felt cold despite the laughing children and fires? That this feels warm even in the face of the chill dungeon, Winter’s openly hostile demeanour and this pristine hall of mirrors?

She settles for, “I don’t want my sister eating one of those grapes.”

Weiss’ shoulders slump just slightly at that and her eyes cut from Yang to Ilia and then quickly to the door beyond which her own sister is waiting. She understands.

But Yang still turns back to Blake and says, “I’m still not signing my life away to you, though.”

Blake only smiles again.

 

\--

 

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Ruby.” Pause. “Why?”

“Just curious.”

Yang is ninety-nine percent sure Weiss Schnee is never ‘ _just curious_ ’ about anything.

 

\--

 

Yang had expected to be treated as a prisoner; confined to the castle grounds if not a single wing or room or something that could limit her chances of running off; denied basic comforts such as a bath and change of clothes. So when Blake passes her back into Neptune’s custody and shoos them away, she’s surprised a perfectly reasonable amount when he leads her from the castle itself to the area around it.

Beacon Castle is ringed by, first, guards; second, a wide strip of land filled with gardens and a few small shops and houses, residencies of those who work in the castle proper; and third, by high walls manned constantly by an ever-rotating series of guards dressed in her black uniform. It is, more than just a castle, the true centre of Vale city. Beyond the walls lies the rest of the city, sprawling out and away towards the coast, but that’s not where Neptune takes her.

He opens a door for her with a grin and shows her into a dimly lit shop filled entirely with racks and stands of fabric. Popping out from behind one of the stands is a woman in a floppy hat, high collared woollen top with a corset strapped loosely over the top, more a fashion statement than anything else, Yang supposes.

“Neptune!” she cries, dropping a pair of large scissors on the counter as she passes it to slug him good-naturedly in the shoulder. “Did you rip your coat again?”

He laughs. “No, Coco, I brought someone in need of your services, actually. This is Yang.”

Coco slips a pair of wire framed glasses from inside her corset (maybe not the best place to keep them) and slides them up her nose. “Hm.” She pulls Yang away from Neptune by the shoulders and inspects her. It’s the most uncomfortable she’s felt under someone’s gaze in a long time.

Then Coco is grabbing her by the elbow and turning her and that’s about all of that she’s having. “Listen,” she says ripping her arm away. “I’ve been manhandled enough, thanks.”

Coco’s eyes dart to Neptune and then back. She hums again. “Turn. _Slowly_.”

Yang has never been one to _enjoy_ being bossed around, least of all by someone with any amount of control over what she ends up doing but she obliges Coco anyway. Her father was never much for clothing, he left all that to her and Ruby (and the seamstress in Patch village, on occasion) but she still has to grit her teeth to keep her temper in check.

“Time frame?” Coco asks Neptune.

He shakes his head. “Don’t make anything from scratch.”

Just like that, Coco is off. Her store is mostly loose sheets of fabric rather than pre-made apparel, but that clearly isn’t stopping her from finding some. She talks to herself, asks a few questions about colour and cut and material preferences, but mostly she just shoots Yang the odd appraising glance and goes about her work in silence.

Yang steps back beside Neptune. “Should I worry?”

“Nah. Coco’s the best. That’s why the queen comes to her. She was the Schnee’s exclusive tailor for the longest time. Belladonna gets her to do uniforms for all her lieutenants and the like rather than have them made in bulk.” He lifts an eyebrow at her probably-stolen guard outfit. “She’s probably having an aneurysm with what you’re wearing.”

She rolls her lips together and then turns to face him properly. “Let me ask you. Why is the queen… like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like…” She waves her hands around in a vague attempt to find some way of making sense of her questions. “Why do all this? Why show _me_ any amount of kindness? Why? What’s the point of it all?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes the only way to beat someone is to be better.”

Yang eyes him hard for a long moment, searching his face for the story behind that statement but there’s nothing written there. Nothing she can read, anyway. She has her mouth open to push it, but Coco is back then, hands grabbing at Yang and shoving her away, forcing clothes into her arms and insisting she put them on.

It’s sort of insulting how pushy this woman is but Yang feels it would be rude to punch her, so she settles for a glare with a soundtrack of Neptune’s laughter. The heavy fabric is comfortable though and the leather of the coat feels durable; Coco has even provided her with boots, soft and flexible but with a thick sole and oiled laces. She wiggles her toes, lifts her heel, but there’s no more than a bearable about of friction so she shouldn’t have blisters with luck.

Neptune appraises her with a soft smile when she reappears, and Coco seems satisfied with her work if her pleased up-and-down inspection is anything to judge by.

“Come back when you’re finished with whatever Blake needs you for,” she says. “I could do better with some time.”

Yang rolls her eyes. “I’ll pencil that in.” Right after ‘get answers’ and ‘find Ruby’. “Thanks.”

Coco waves a hand and goes back to what she’d been doing before. “Yep. Neptune, tell Blake to send Velvet back at her earliest convenience, thanks.”

“I have no control over her majesty, Coco, but I’ll relay that.” He holds the door for her and she makes a point of holding it for _him_ once she’s outside.

She also snatches his hat as he walks past and settles it on her head. “So where to now, lieutenant? Pastries? Do I need a fun hat?”

Neptune rolls his eyes at her. “I don’t think so. You’re welcome to ask around though if you like it so much.”

“Not really. Don’t feel it’s my speed.”

“Then let’s get back to the queen.”

Yang has to skip a few steps to catch up to him. “Please tell me she’s not going to wage war against the folks in Forever Fall.”

“I don’t think so. Between them, she and Weiss are a little more about cunning than assault.”

“So?”

“They probably have a plan.”

“If they had a plan they’d have known where Adam and Whitley were.”

He shoots her a look that suggests she’s smarter than she’s behaving and he knows it. “Or they had a plan and couldn’t do it for lack of information.”

She’s not sure if that’s reassuring.

 

\--

 

The morning sun rises over the fields past Beacon’s walls and highlights the grasses in a stunning gold, crowning the always-autumn Forever Fall in glittering oranges and pinks. Ruby is out there somewhere with Adam and Whitley and Yang would like _something_ to be give her a sense that _something_ will change; that she’ll definitely see her sister again. Alive, ideally.

Nothing about the city of Vale or the castle itself has shifted at all since the day before, nothing at all indicates that this nebulous change she’s hoping for will occur any time soon. Neptune had assured her that Blake and Weiss are the sorts of people to have a plan; that planning is what they do best.

But what about carrying out plans?

He’d shrugged again, unconcerned, walked away.

What about _her_? She still doesn’t know why she’s here.

Yang swings her legs over the edge of the waist high stone railing around the gardens she’d stumbled sleeplessly into in that held-breath beat before dawn. Her nightgown flutters open in the breeze, chilling her; the sleep shirt and breeches she’d been given weren’t heavy and winter is approaching.

The garden has some weird plants growing in it, some of them even have fruit and flowers still lingering, holding on in the gathering chill. After her encounter with the bleeding grape, however, she’s not brave enough to get too close. Blake might seem nice enough for a queen with a nasty reputation but she’s not going to push her luck.

“You’re up early.”

She turns, finds Blake in a similar long night dress (black, of course), notes her mussed hair and the dark beneath her eyes, turns back to the sunrise.

“I’m an early riser. You?”

There’s a huff, a snort maybe. “I don’t sleep much.” She looks so soft in relaxed clothes, so fragile and small that it fills Yang’s chest with a liquid heat that simultaneously warms her in ways she didn’t know she needed and threatens to break her.

Yang feels Blake step closer, lean against the railing beside her, breathing soft but heavy on the exhale. “Sleep is good for you. Should try it.”

Blake’s laugh is forced. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

They lapse into silence, watching the sun inch above the tree tops, light spilling across the valley. In the castle dwellings below them, people are beginning to stir and go about their business. Yang can already smell the warm, spiced scent of baking and it reminds her to ask how to find breakfast.

Instead what she asks is, “Why am I here?”

Blake blinks lethargically. “Seems obvious to me. Join Adam, go on a mission for him, get caught.”

Yang offers her a lopsided smile. “Try again. Why am I not locked up?”

“I can have you tossed back into that cell if it’d make you feel better.”

“It wouldn’t.”

There’s another long beat between them before Blake looks around. “You didn’t seem like someone who needed imprisoning.”

“Still not convinced. What is it that you and the little snow-princess know?”

Blake sucks in a deep breath. “Jacques didn’t have the same skills with the mirrors as Winter and Weiss,” she says softly. “And Whitley doesn’t know it exists. So whenever Jacques wanted to know something he’d have to ask Weiss. It’s the only real reason he kept her around.”

“She saw something then.”

“You say that like you think the mirrors dole out prophecies,” she says drolly, meeting Yang’s gaze fully for the first time. “They don’t. They only show what _is_ not what could be.”

“And what did it _show_ her?”

For a long time, Blake doesn’t say anything, and when she does it’s not what Yang was expecting. “I met Adam about eight years ago. My father had just been appointed the Menagerie ambassador to Vale but I didn’t want to leave at the time so I stayed with his family. Our parents were all friends. He had all these ideas about how Faunus were being treated by the Valens and we shouldn’t be dealing with things politically but with force.”

“That’s a solid platform to ensure fairer treatment,” Yang drawls.

There’s a flash in Blake’s eyes then, something bright that fills her with… with something completely indefinable. It’s like it rekindles her will to live or maybe is sparks hope or… whatever. Yang can’t define it and she could spend six hours musing over it.

“Eight years ago,” Blake continues, “I thought he was the embodiment of fair. That if he had the chance he could make proper changes.”

“Glad to see you got over that, but you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I asked Weiss to scry the fairest person of all,” she all but whispers. “And it showed us.” The look Blake gives her is significant, an answer without words.

Yang lifts a hand. “Hate to break it to you, highness, but there’s no one in the _world_ fairer than the absurdly blonde Schnee siblings.”

At that, Blake bursts out laughing.

“And,” she goes on, “having met all three, I’d even go so far as to say Weiss is _definitely_ the fairest of them. She needs to be introduced to the sun.”

“I’m going to tell her that.”

“Ugh, go for it.”

“She’ll be flattered.”

“That’s what I want, to flatter her. My mission in life.” Yang isn’t sure to ask the next question without coming across condescending or, worse, racist. But nothing risked, nothing gained, so she mumbles, “Why didn’t Weiss take the throne? Why you?”

Blake lifts a single haughty eyebrow and for a second, nightgown and all, she looks every inch a queen. “Because I’m Faunus?”

“Because she’s the heir of the last king.”

“She didn’t want it. Her family is Atlesian and Weiss is of the opinion that Atlesians have grown too big in the head lately and need to mind their own business rather than butt into everyone else’s’.”

“Magnanimous of her.”

“She’s right. If people like Jacques and Whitley had their way, the whole world would be controlled by a few. By Atlesians. By Faunus if Adam had the reins. And it wouldn’t be good for the other side.”

“And you?”

Blake blinks, looks at her again, confusion writ plain in her expression. “What about me?”

“Why did you take the throne?”

“If not my father, then me. I… I guess I felt I owed it to him.”

Yang braces herself on the railing and leans back so she can bump her shoulder into Blake’s. “For what it’s worth? I prefer you over Whitley or Adam.”

This time, when Blake smiles at her, it’s the same soft warm as her eyes were yesterday, the first sincere smile she’s seen. It warms her from her toes to her crown.

“Thanks. It’s not without it’s worries though. Beyond the immediate, even.”

“What do you mean?”

She hunches one shoulder and goes back to squinting at the sun. “Vale should be ruled by a Valen.”

“You’ll find someone.”

And Yang does her very best to ignore the sensation in her gut telling her that Blake already has someone in mind.

 

\--

 

“Do you believe in fate?” Ilia asks her later as they walk through the town. She has her arms wrapped around a parcel of baked goods they’d purchased from the single most excitable shopkeeper Yang had ever met.

“Never thought about it. Why?”

Ilia wrestles with her words and maybe takes it out on her pastries just a little before she speaks again. “I just… finding Weiss again it… I don’t know. I didn’t think I would.”

“But maybe you were meant to?”

She sighs. “Yeah.”

“Maybe that’d be nice.”

“It just…” Her lips twist together. “There’s that _feeling_ about it. You know?”

And Yang remembers that soft smile from Blake earlier and thinks, _yeah_ , maybe she does.

 

\--

 

“So listen,” she says to Neptune, having cornered him in a corridor after spending about twenty minutes wandering around, lost, looking for him. “What… Do you have like… hay bales?”

The expression the slowly clouds over his face is purest confusion. “I don’t understand.”

Her fingers clench in and out of fists even though the action does nothing to sooth the fire boiling her stomach. “I need to punch something.”

Just as slowly, his expression reverses into a cheeky grin. He slings an arm around her shoulder that she immediately shrugs off. “Let me introduce you to Sun.”

Sun, as it turns out, she vaguely recognises as the blonde guy who hit her over the head with a stick. Yes. This will do nicely.

They find him in the training yard behind the castle where all of Blake’s black-clad guardsmen do routine drills and sparring. Sun is alone this afternoon, swinging his staff at a hapless straw dummy that occasionally looses a few puffs of stuffing, stripped to the waist and barefoot.

“Sun! Time to pick on something that hits back.”

Yang is quick to toss off her coat and vest. She doesn’t own gloves though and when she looks around for something to wrap around her knuckles as a little bit of protection she comes up empty. With a little improvisation, she rips a couple of strips off the bottom of her shirt to bind her hands.

“Time to even the score, blondie,” she says as Sun skips over.

“Oh! I know you. Sorry about that.”

Yang bears her teeth at him. “You sure will be.”

He flashes her a perfect smile and twirls his staff. “We’ll see.”

Then just like that he’s rushing at her and she’s caught up in batting his stick away. She shoots a fist out in a punch and her knuckles meet the spinning haft of his staff. He jabs at her and she dances to the side. She kicks at his knee and he cracks her ankle for her trouble.

He’s good, fast, a challenge.

For about an hour, probably, she’s caught up in the sparring. He clips her a few times, she lands a couple of glancing blows. Nothing serious. Enough to leave her winded and shiny with sweat.

They would probably have kept going until the dying light made it impossible except they’re interrupted.

“Get it together, woman.”

Sun looks around first and beams so brightly it almost makes up for the fact that the actual sun has very nearly set. “Princess,” he says. “Majesty.”

When Yang looks over it’s to see Weiss leaning, arms folded, into Blake’s personal space wearing the sort of shit-eating grin that would make even Ruby proud. For her part, Blake is bright red.

Weiss huffs, blowing hair from her face. “And you call me useless. Come on.” She turns and stalks off then, skirts swishing dramatically. Ilia, her nearly-ever-present shadow since they were reunited, steps away from the wall where she’d been blending in quite well to trail after her.

Sun smacks Yang across the shoulders with the flat of his staff. “She’s here for you. Run along.”

Yang throws a half-hearted punch at him for the slap, but her glare is probably more effective. Still, she doesn’t ask how he knows, just says, “Thanks for the workout,” and snatches her previously discarded clothes from the ground and trots over. “You need me?”

Blake clears her throat and stares over Yang’s shoulder. She’s an odd one. “Yes. I… Just put a proper shirt on and come with me.”

It takes Yang a full minute to process that and remember she’s in only half a shirt. The smile that blooms across her face then is dangerous, she knows, but she can’t help it. “You’re uncomfortable?”

“I’m…” When Blake’s eyes cut back to her, they don’t _quite_ meet Yang’s and when she rips them away, they make a very obvious downward dip first. “I have somewhere to be.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Yang says flatly, shrugging into her coat.

Blake sucks in a breath that whistles through her teeth. “Perhaps not entirely. But Weiss is insisting that you be told… some things.”

“How vague and non-threatening.”

“Consider it a mark of her trust or she’d just throw you in the deep end.”

Yang watches her profile as they walk through the gathering gloom. The lights from inside limn her in gold and cast the rest of her in sharp relief. “Ilia asked me if I believe in fate,” Yang blurts.

It gets Blake to face her again, though. Her earlier red has faded to a soft pink, but her eyes remain steady this time. “Are you asking if I do?”

Is she? “Do you?”

“I… Didn’t used to.”

“Something changed your mind?”

“Weiss.”

“How?”

Blake’s smile is secretive. “I watched her fight her father in every way she could until one day… one day it worked, without her even trying. Maybe we can take our future into our own hands but I think some things are decided for us.”

“You don’t think that it’s maybe just situations forcing our hands?”

“Could be.” She leads Yang inside and up a flight of stairs before she continues that thought. “Have you ever felt something completely inexplicable despite everything you know indicating it to be foolish?”

And Yang is struck again by the welcoming feeling to stepping – in manacles, no less – into Blake’s library and how _safe_ that felt in comparison to Adam’s camp.

“Yes.”

Blake nods her head. “I think that’s fate. Leading us.”

“You think I was meant to come here?”

She realises too late what those words are an admission of and this time it’s _her_ face flooding with red under Blake’s soft smile.

The smile helps, though. Moreso when Blake says, “I guess so.”

Once again, Blake takes her to the mirrored room. The only people in there are Weiss and Ilia, standing shoulder to shoulder at the table, heads together, smiling in a way that screams _private, do not enter_. They both look up when they hear the door, though, and it shatters their moment.

“Nice of you to show up,” Weiss deadpans.

Blake rolls her eyes. “No need for sass, Weiss.”

Except the way Weiss’ nose crinkles Yang knows that she considers there to always be a need for sass. “Fine. Are you ready?”

“It’s Yang we need to ask.”

They both look at her and she instantly feels like she needs another layer or four of clothing. “What?”

“Weiss’ plan is relatively simple,” Blake says nonchalant as anything, “The whole crux of this is that Whitley feels he’s the rightful heir.”

“He’s not,” Weiss reminds her. “I am.”

“So we just need to make a point of proving it.”

“Publically.”

Yang closes her eyes, knowing she’s going to regret asking, but she says it anyway. “What do you need?”

 

\--

 

To her credit, Weiss is exceptional at organising events even when everyone thinks she’s dead. It’s quite the skill.

“She hasn’t left Beacon since the coup,” Ilia tells her while they’re fetching crates of fresh fruit from the markets. “She’s big on planning.”

“She knew this would happen?”

“She has a magic mirror, Yang.”

“Yeah. Did she… Did she know I would…?”

Ilia bursts out laughing. “Play the part so well? I don’t think anyone could’ve suspected that.”

Her mouth twists wryly. “Great.”

“Don’t worry so much.”

“Tell Weiss that, thanks.”

 

\--

 

Dignitaries begin arriving the next afternoon. The castle gates remain closed to them all. Instead they are forced to take rooms at the high-end inns around Beacon’s walls.

Yang, as she suspected, finds Blake in the garden again, watching the lacquered carriages trundle along the streets. Nobility from every corner of Vale, from Atlas and Mistral and some even from Menagerie will be arriving through the night, probably, not wanting to miss out on the celebrations. Even from this far away, Yang imagines she can see how fancy their clothes are.

She hates that she’ll have to wear something similar to be convincing.

“I wasn’t who you expected, was I?” she asks in lieu of announcing her presence.

Blake barely shifts when Yang leans on the railing beside her. “No. Does that bother you?”

“Why would it?” She leans her shoulder into Blake’s for a second. “You weren’t what I expected either.”

“Faunus?”

Yang smiles. “A queen.”

Blake scoffs. “Of necessity.”

“No less for that.”

After a beat, Blake shifts closer until their shoulders brush again. “You don’t have to go through with this. It’ll be easy enough to arrange it so… I don’t know.”

“It’s fine. Ruby always wanted an adventure.”

“This counts?”

It’s laughter this time that bubbles forth. “She literally said before we left that adventure did not mean romance and sword fights. So honestly, I’m not sure.”

“With luck there won’t be any of it,” Blake sighs.

“Would you like to know a secret, your majesty?” Yang asks, and knows her eyes are twinkling with the same mischief she always sees in Ruby’s when she’s planning something stupid. Blake must be wary of it when she looks over but there’s enough curiosity as well that Yang leans in and whispers, “It’s a bit late for the first one.”

Predictably, Blake goes red. She looks away but can’t hide it. Nor can she conceal the strain in her voice. “Don’t call me that.”

Without looking away, Yang says, “Alright, Blake.”

Blake’s fingers tighten around the railing and her voice is no less hoarse when she says, “Better.”

Yang places a hand over one of Blake’s and murmurs, “Get some sleep, Blake. We have a story to sell in the morning.” She squeezes before she turns to leave.

She just barely catches Blake’s whisper.

“You too.”

 

\--

 

Yang doesn’t go back to her room, though, she wanders about the lower level of the castle for a bit then goes into the training yard where those straw practice dummies stand on their poles. Moonlight spills across the gravel, casting strange nebulous shadows from trees and shrubs, dancing in larger-than-life plays in the light breeze that would be enough to give her a sense of unease except she has plenty of bigger worries right now.

Those worries churn in her chest, a tempest with nowhere to go. She crosses the yard in four long strides and squares up against the nearest dummy. It may not be a hay bale but it is the next best thing. The first few punches she throws are experimental, but once she’s rolled her shoulders and stretched her arms to warm up she sets in to beat the figurative and literal stuffing out of this wannabe-scarecrow.

It takes a while – longer than she’d expected, perhaps nearly two hours – before the storm in her stomach subsides but she keeps pounding her fists into the sack-face, the overstuffed chest, through her tiredness anyway. Ideally she’ll sleep through everything tomorrow.

A non-moon-light catches her in the corner of her eye though, warm and flickering – a lantern – and she squints around to send the most forceful glare she can manage at whoever has interrupted her.

“What are you doing ou –” The voice cuts off but only for a second before shifting into a higher pitched, more incredulous tone. “ _Yang_?”

She blinks against the light until she can make out the person holding the lantern. “Jaune?”

His shoulders lift, then fall in a gesture she can’t interpret but the smile that creeps across his face is equal parts relieved and pleasantly surprised.

“What are you doing here?” he asks her at the same time as she sighs, “You’re alive.”

They laugh.

Yang goes first: “I’ve been roped into the queen’s crazy plan for tomorrow,” she explains. “Unless you meant _here_ here, in which case I just really wanted to punch something.”

Still smiling, he steps closer and she realises he’s in sleeping clothes; loose shirt, baggy pants and stockings but no shoes, none of which seems enough for the temperature. “It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Ruby will be glad to know you’re not dead.”

“Is she here?” His tone and eyebrows rise in equal measure.

“No. I hope she comes tomorrow, she was devastated when we were told you died in the coup. What happened?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “Wrong place, right time. When Weiss went to see Ghira about her father’s intentions I went with.”

“Ilia wasn’t there.”

“She was doing some spy stuff. Ghira had Weiss sent off to some safe house thing somewhere in the city and I was going to follow her with supplies but Whitley and Schnee soldiers showed up and there was a big fight. I think my uniform is the only thing that got me out of there alive.”

“That’s…”

He grins unselfconsciously and finishes the thought, “Lucky. Yep.”

“Hope you’re going to be at this thing tomorrow,” she huffs. “We could use some of that luck.”

He leans a little closer. “I’m not a very good soldier, Yang. They mostly employ me as a combat medic because I know how to use herbs and medicines.”

Yang hesitates only a moment before telling him to, “Be there. I have a feeling we’ll need that.” She backs away from the dummy, exhaustion now making it hard for her to do more than lift her shoulders, arms slack and loose and burning from the effort. “It’s good to see you, Jaune.”

He beams again, offers a mock salute and a, “Sleep well, Yang,” before turning back to the barracks.

This time, she does go back to her rooms to sleep and – miraculously – sleep she does.

 

\--

 

“It’s like you’ve never worn lace before.”

Weiss’ tone is two parts judgemental and one part scorn.

“I _haven’t_ worn lace before, princess. I’ve never even _seen_ lace up close.”

She scoffs, or maybe chokes a little bit and forces the ridiculous outfit into Yang’s hands. “Get dressed, farmgirl. You’ll need all the help you can get.”

“Insults are unbecoming of you.”

Yang thinks she’s lucky all Weiss does is glare at her and stomp out.

 

\--

 

Unsurprisingly, the first thing Yang sees when she strides into the ballroom is Blake. She’s wearing a floor length deep purple dress in fine silk with ruffled layers beneath in gradiating colours from dark to a pale lavender. The bodice is embroidered in equally pale flowers that match the belt around her waist. The light from the chandeliers catches on the amethysts around her throat and in her hair giving her a sparkling halo wherever she stands.

For a moment, Yang forgets to walk, forgets to breathe, even. The only thing that gets her moving again is Weiss prodding her in the lower back. Her dress is white and blue with cream slashes and the most intricate fractal designs in thread only a few shades darker than the rest of the fabric. She’s stunning as well (everyone is, really), but Yang’s gaze keeps dragging back to Blake as if she has some sort of magical power.

Since no one in the room knows her, she’s not stopped by anyone looking to strike up a conversation. They probably all assume she’s someone unimportant, unworthy of their time or words.

That thought makes her smile. They’ll change their tune.

When she reaches the end of the room Weiss leaves her side. Out of the corner of her eye Yang is vaguely aware of Ilia immediately suctioning onto her. (She’s wearing something no less lovely but twelve times more practical for beating people up; Yang is jealous.) They disappear through a side door; dressed for the occasion already, yes, but this is not yet their moment.

She’s alone for only a second or two, then Blake notices her. When Blake smiles it barely touches her face, it’s more a sense that she’s _projecting_ a pleased curve of her lips than actually doing it. Can everyone else tell she’s smiling without smiling? Can they see it? Or is it just for her? Yang’s heart skips a painful beat at that last thought.

It skips another when Blake’s eyes drop to her feet and slowly scan back up. That _sense_ of a smile touching the air around her rather than her features only intensifies.

When Yang stops beside her Blake murmurs, “Weiss did an excellent job.” She holds a hand out and Yang doesn’t even hesitate before laying hers across Blake’s palm. And when she’s spun out she just barks a laugh and entertains her.

Yang’s gold skirts twirl around her, all yellow and cream slashes and stitching that catches the light and redistributes it softly so it looks like she’s giving off her own soft glow. Blake doesn’t let go of her hand and Yang is struck by the realisation that her dress matches the warmth of Blake’s eyes almost perfectly and _that_ reflects the liquid warm settling low between her ribs.

She wonders if that was the instruction Weiss gave Coco.

“You look beautiful,” Yang feels the need to say.

This time when Blake smiles it’s with her whole body – face included. “Says you,” she retorts.

Yang laughs, but their moment is shattered when Neptune and Sun (in proper dress uniform) appear at their side. “Sorry, majesty. The last of the guests have arrived,” Neptune mutters.

She turns, that pleased aura fading somewhat. “What about the guests of _honour_?”

He shakes his head. But no sooner has he done that than Sun is elbowing him in the ribs. All four of them look up and over the heads of the gathered crowd where the great double doors stand open.

A small group of people have just stepped across the threshold and as their arrival is noted by those closest a hush ripples through the hall until deathly silence echoes ominously off the walls.

Adam is easily recognisable from his red hair, bandage, high collared black coat. Equally as identifiable is Whitley standing beside him in the exact opposite palette. Where Whitley stands at ramrod ease, Adam’s posture is more the shoulders back, spine straight of someone ready for a fight, all coiled violence and anticipation.

On Adam’s other side is Fennec, no doubt he has knives stashed somewhere about his person, but he looks deceptively at ease. And the last member of their group is Ruby.

Yang feels tension she didn’t even know she was holding slip from her shoulders. “That’s my sister,” she whispers to Blake.

Sun and Neptune both hear that as well and immediately one of them breaks off to edge around the room. All Yang can do from where she stands is hope Ruby recognises her. Honestly, she isn’t even really sure why Ruby would be there, or rather, why Adam let her tag along.

“Start showing people into the dining hall,” Blake says to the guard who stayed. He doesn’t move, but when Yang turns she sees Neptune motioning for other queen’s guard to begin ushering the guests from the room. Every servant in the room seems to get the message at the same time and they all immediately make a beeline to the exits.

Conversation picks up again slowly, uncertainly, but Yang doesn’t see much more than the start; Neptune touches her arm and follows as she and Blake duck through the same exit Weiss had used earlier.

No sooner has she emerged into the truly massive dining hall than Sun is approaching them. He doesn’t get to them first, though, a squealing Ruby does, throwing herself at Yang with trembling relief.

“I thought you were dead,” she nearly shrieks directly into Yang’s ear. “When you didn’t come back… Adam said… The queen doesn’t take captives, he said… I…”

Very carefully, Yang places her hands around Ruby’s waist and removes her from her stranglehold. “The queen _doesn’t_ take captives,” she says. “I’m not a prisoner.”

“You’re…?” Ruby’s eyes cut to Blake and widen comically. Her stage whisper next is clearly meant only for Yang but Blake definitely hears it, “Is this the black queen?”

Blake smiles, her eyes twinkling. “That’s me, yes.”

“Listen to me closely, Ruby,” Yang says. “Go and sit with Adam like everything’s fine, okay?”

She gets a serious nod from her sister that just doesn’t _sit_ right on her face.

When she makes to turn around and head back to the table, though, Yang snags her hand. “Jaune’s alive, too. I saw him just yesterday.”

Ruby beams, slips her hand free, disappears into the crowd.

Blake lifts a brow. “Jaune?”

“Was conscripted from our village. Whitley said he was likely killed in the fighting.”

“Seems everything is coming up Ruby today.”

Yang laughs and follows Blake to the table. The head of the table, incidentally, though she sits off to one side, of course. It’s not until Blake stands behind her high-backed chair that the rest of the gathered guests finally settle at their places and quiet down. Adam is standing up the far end with his associates looking the very definition of a bottled storm.

Blake motions down with her hand and in a scraping of chairs and swishing of fabrics the gathered nobility all seat themselves so she is the only one still standing. All along the table platters of fruits and cheeses sit as appetisers before the meal arrives but, as good manners dictate, no one reaches for anything yet. They won’t until Blake has explained the purpose of this gathering.

“I’m so glad you could all join me today,” she says in a voice meant to carry, a serious, queenly tone. “It’s my great pleasure to announce my betrothal to a Valen, thus ensuring the country will be ruled by one of its own, as it should be.”

A whisper of conversation ripples through them ranging from rightfully pleased in the case of the assembled Valen nobility to curiosity from the few dignitaries from Mistral and Atlas who could be there. But Yang is watching Adam up the other end and, as expected, he slams his hands against the table and stands.

“You’d let this _fraud_ hold the crown?” he exclaims. “She’s not even rightfully entitled to the throne let alone to make this decision.”

Every eye swivels to look at him and a murmur of agreement rises from the Atlesians. Some of them look at Whitley who is wearing a smug smile, clearly expecting this to go his way.

Adam lifts an imperious finger and jabs it viciously at Blake. “This _woman_ breaks promises, holds no true allegiances even to her own people, and has murdered anyone in her way including Princess Weiss and perhaps even her own father.” He throws his other hand out in a gesture to Ruby. “She killed my companion’s sister just for walking down the street!”

Ruby shifts uncomfortably and when Adam looks down at her Yang understands that she was supposed to stand and join him in accusing Blake of her crimes. Instead, while he’s looking away, Yang pushes her chair out and stands.

“Get your facts right, Adam,” she says and his head whips up. His whole face twitches. Whitley leans forward, shock warring against his otherwise still features. “No one killed me. Unless you’d like to try again?”

Fury fills his face until his skin nearly matches the colour of his hair. “What are you talking about?”

She tilts her head and asks sweetly, “Your provisions? The anti-magic grapes are poison, that’s why the queen never takes prisoners, because your own people kill themselves before she can. But I’m not a prisoner, am I?”

“You were a spy all along,” he hisses. “And that doesn’t change anything, she still killed Whitley’s sisters.”

Yang blinks. “Did she? According to whom?”

“She’s a conniving bitch,” Adam shouts, banging his fist again. “Not fit to rule. Whitley is the heir.”

“Is he now?”

Once again, all eyes swing around to locate the speaker, this time it’s Weiss (Ilia shadowing her still) standing up the other end so Adam can only look at either her or Blake and not both. Weiss isn’t even looking at him, too busy retrieving something from her belt pouch.

“Last I checked,” she goes on. “I was the heir. Not Whitley.”

Another murmur rolls across the table.

Whitley lurches to his feet. “You _died_ ,” he says, the first indication of emotion quivering in his voice. “I watched the soldiers kill you.”

She huffs a laugh. “You never were the smartest, Whitley, were you? You think I’d let _you_ kill me? How embarrassing.”

“So you’re Blake’s prisoner,” Whitley continues. “That doesn’t make you the rightful heir.”

“Do I _look_ like a prisoner to you?” she says, sounding completely scandalised by the notion. “Ridiculous. Can you believe him, Blake?”

“It’s like he thinks he came here today to get the throne for himself.”

“Ridiculous,” Weiss repeats softly. “Sit down, both of you, and be civil or you can leave.”

Neither of them sits. “You think you can accuse us of trying to kill you, sister? That Adam has been poisoning his own followers? That _she_ should be queen?”

Weiss shrugs. “Better her than you.”

“She’s _Faunus_!”

It’s a credit to her that she keeps her face smooth. “We’re _Atlesian_ , brother,” Weiss reminds him coldly. “We have no right to the Valen throne either.”

While Whitley splutters over that, Adam says, “You don’t have proof of any of these accusations, anyway.”

“Oh no?” Weiss looks at Yang.

“Fennec?” Yang says. “Adam gives all his people parcels with rations. Where’s yours?”

He looks confused for a moment but eventually produces the little wrapped package. Adam opens his mouth to speak but Blake cuts him off, “Open it.”

He does so slowly, eyes watching Adam.

“The little one, Fennec,” Yang continues. “Pass the grape to Adam.”

Fennec holds it out. Adam glares at each of them in turn, hands fisted at his side.

 “If you’re not giving poisoned fruits to your people then there’s no harm in eating it to prove your innocence,” Blake says blithely.

All eyes are on him. He’s physically quivering. Even Whitley stares at him, caught between indignation and wariness.

He does eventually take the grape and peel it free of its individual wrappings. His fingers shake just slightly and Yang worries that he’ll squash it and do something rash.

So she says, “Remember, Adam.” He looks at her, all hatred and fear. “The black queen doesn’t take captives.”

His hesitation should speak for itself but they all wait with held breaths anyway until he takes a bite out of the end. The bloody ooze leaks across his chin and he smiles, pointed teeth and wild fury.

As Blake had told her, he barely gets a chance to swallow before his eyes roll back in his head and he crumples to the floor, knocking his chair over on the way down.

To be honest, Yang hadn’t really thought he’d do it. She swaps a look with Weiss (who is clearly just as surprised).

Whitley nearly trips over his chair when he lurches away from Adam. One of the uniformed guard steps from against the wall and hurries over. In the formal dress it takes Yang a moment to recognise Jaune as he crouches and feels for Adam’s vitals. He has a pouch of herbs with him but he doesn’t bother opening it.

“Potent stuff, majesty,” he says, standing. “Nothing I can do about that. He’s dead.”

Blake shakes her head. “Make sure the rest of the fruit is disposed of carefully. _Very_ carefully.”

He bows and begins to wrap the remains up in the cloth. A few other guards scurry over in their best attempt at surreptitious to remove the body. Whitley watches them work for a second before spinning on Blake quivering with either fear or fury.

Maybe both.

“You killed him,” he spits, emotion thick in his voice now. “We all saw you.”

Blake spreads her hands in front of herself. “I told him to prove his innocence if he could,” she argues. “He couldn’t. Would you like to try?”

“There’s no proof I was there when someone tried to kill Weiss.”

“I was there,” says Jaune. “Maybe my word doesn’t count for much since I’m clearly here with the queen, but given… everything, it shouldn’t be a stretch to believe you’re behind it.”

Recognition flashes briefly across Whitley’s face and Yang remembers that it was _him_ who knew Jaune’s name; knew him as the soldier who wasn’t very good. It was Whitley who was so dismissive of him.

Whitley opens his mouth but one of the other dignitaries stands up and his teeth click closed audibly in the profundity of the silence. “I think, Whitley,” he says, tugging his vest straight. “You should accept your failure with what dignity you have left.”

The woman still seated beside him, Atlesian by her pristine dress and intricate updo adds, “It takes quite the heartless ambition to attempt to kill your sister.” She turns and directs her next words at Blake, “What of Winter Schnee and her father?”

“Winter is fine,” Blake says. “She’s captain of my guard. Her father, regrettably, could not be saved.”

“Do you know who was responsible for Jacques’ death?” asks the man.

“No,” she admits. “Although given how events unfolded, I would not be surprised to learn it was Whitley or Adam who was behind it. _This_ I have no proof of.”

Whitley’s mouth dropped open at the mention of his other sister and it’s with the greatest satisfaction that Yang watches Winter enter the chamber with some more guards and shackles. Like all the Schnees Yang has met, Whitley is the kind of pale that seems unhealthy, but he somehow manages to blanch further when he spots Winter.

“Nice to see you, too, little brother,” Winter tells him, demeanour frosty as always. “It’s also nice to arrest you.”

He doesn’t even resist when the manacles are snapped around his wrists. He does splutter when he’s dragged from the room. Fennec goes with, unchained, but pliant. Yang doesn’t know what Blake will do with him, doesn’t really care either. She _would_ like to know what happens to the rest of the White Fang now, though. Probably something to be discussed by the important people much later.

One of the Valen dignitaries stands then, watches Whitley lead away before turning to Blake, clearing his throat. “What of this betrothal you spoke of,” he queries. “Was that a deception to force this public pseudo-trial or can we expect you to hold to your word? Vale _should_ be ruled by someone from Vale.”

Yang feels when Blake’s gaze shifts to her, she _knows_ , can feel the tingles, so she looks around despite being fully aware of what she’ll find. Her expression is pointed. 

Again, Blake’s eyes are that wonderful warm golden brown and she’s projecting her almost-smile. “I meant what I said,” she replies without looking away from Yang. “Although at the moment the betrothal is more a… hopeful maybe than definite.”

“No,” Yang cuts in before the nobleman can say something tart. “It’s a definite thing.”

There’s nothing ‘almost’ about Blake’s smile this time. “Good.”

 _Good_.

 

 


End file.
